Do you remember Alexander Makedonsky? Who fighted against, guess who, Persia? So guess what, it is Persian Gulf, it will be Persian Gulf, it was Persian Gulf when there was not even English language at all.
I think you mean Alexander of Macedonia. In English he is sometimes called Alexander of Macedonia, but he is more well know as Alexander the Great. If Makedonsky were a Russian surname, it would be appropriate to leave it untranslated. But since it is not, you must translate it into English if you want to be understood.
Prosecutor: "So, you viewed child porn, were aware that it was still on your computer, and didn't take any action to remove it? That sounds like a clear-cut of possession to me"
A good judge very well may see through this and but most won't. I think it will be immaterial soon enough because every law will get updated to criminalize the act of viewing (or requesting for the purpose of viewing, or something similar).
I agree with you completely. Prosecutors try to shortcut the difficult process of proving possession all the time. And the laws will definitely have to be updated. Let's hope that when they are, the law makers focus on the acts of the human being and what he sees on his screen (as the judges in this case seem to have done) rather than the inner workings of his computer. I think the law makers should ask themselves "what would constitute possession of a pornagraphic magazine? What are the equivelent actions on the World Wide Web?" The dissenting judge in particular seems to be exploring this question.
The question is: does one posses (in a legal sense) the contents of one's browser cache.
That seems like an absurd question. Of course you do, generally speaking.
I am not sure. I have been reading definitions of legal possession and they frequently require the possessor to excercise control over the object in order for it to be considered in his possesion.
When I read this legal decision, I get the impression that the justices are reluctant to directly answer the question of whether a web browser user is in possession of any given file in his browser's cache. They say that he can't possibly be if he has never heard of the browser cache. Then the majority and the disenter separately advance their theories as to when a person gains possession of an image which has been displayed in his browser window. The majority says that he goes from seeing it to possessing it when he orders the computer to keep it (I am paraphrasing here). The disenter says that he comes into possession of it when he, after understanding the nature of the website, begins to use it actively.
Nowhere can I find a statement by either the majority or the dissent which would suggest that a person who opened a web page with child pornography without knowing in advance what was on it has violated any laws, even technically.
They do not specifically discuss whether a person who accidently opened a page with child pornography is legally oblidged to flush his browser cache. It would of course be a good idea and if one had did so it could be proof that one deliberately rejected possession of the images. But, I think a court might decide that a person who left it in the cache (along with thousands of other files with meaningless names) until it had expired had abandoned it and thus not taken possession.
The difference between viewing pornography on the Internet and possessing pornography may be illustrated this way: Suppose that word gets around a school that "there is a dirty picture in the third stall in the boy's room" and some of the boys make excuses to go and look. They do not become possessors of the picture. But one could become a possessor by taking the picture down, taking it home, and hiding it under his matress. And, if we assume (for purposes of argument) that what the boys did was wrong, what the last boy did was more wrong.
Thanks for the lesson but your analogy is off. Under NY state law, looking at that picture on the wall is not illegal (federal law is another story but not in play in this case) but taking a picture of it so you can look again without going to the stall (i.e. caching it locally) means you now possess it. But what if the kid who took the picture didn't know that he has the picture, didn't look at it again, and didn't even take it on purpose. Can he be said to possess for purpose of criminal prosecution? The court said no. Taking it home and hiding it under his mattress would be a completely different story.
I think you've hit the nail on the head here. The whole browser cache question comes to which of these two scenarios is most like the use of a browser with a cache. I would say it is more like the latter. The knowledgable user will know about the cache but probably never examines the files in it and does not consider them to be "saved". He lets the computer take care of it. It is as if the boy knew in theory that the camera in his prosthetic eye must have saved a picture of the bathroom wall for a few minutes, but doesn't care and doesn't try to extract it.
I don't think that's quite right. It was not that he did not know he possessed them, it was that he did not posses them even though they were in his browser cache
That's a great theory, but it doesn't seem to match up with what the ruling actually says:
We must consider, among other issues, the evidentiary significance of "cache files," or temporary internet files automatically created and stored on a defendant's hard drive, and the defendant's awareness of the presence of such files. We conclude that where the evidence fails to show that defendant had such awareness, the People have not met their burden of demonstrating defendant's knowing procurement or possession of those files.
I interpret this to mean that if the defendant didn't know about the cache, the claim that the cached files (all by themselves) are contraband is dead in the water. But I am not sure they are saying that a user who knows about the cache becomes the possessor of a web page the instant it appears on his screen. Look at what they said later:
We also agree that where a promotion or possession conviction is premised on cached images or files as contraband, the People must prove, at a minimum, that the defendant was aware of the presence of those items in the cache.
We hold, however, that regardless of a defendant's awareness of his computer's cache function, the files stored in the cache may constitute evidence of images that were previously viewed; to possess those images, however, the defendant's conduct must exceed mere viewing to encompass more affirmative acts of control such as printing, downloading or saving.
This is a little confusingly worded, but the majority seems to want to see proof that the defendant tried to keep the images by storing them elsewhere on the hard disk. The dissent wants to see proof that the defendant wanted to keep the images on his screen. Both seem to see the cache (at least when used as intended) more as part of the trail of evidence which shows what buttons the defendant pressed in his web browser. They seem to want to see proof that the images were present on his computer by his orders and not simply as a side-effect of the technology.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but technically don't you download a page in order to view it?
Technically, yes. Your computer may also "save" the page in your browser cache. But you do not take possesion of what is on the page until you press a button and save it somewhere where you can find it again.
Just wanted to mention that in the disent a number of deliberate acts which could be considered the taking of possession are named. It is suggested that a person may be taking posession of PD images if he opens additional pages, keeps them open in tabs, or does other things to indicate that he wants PD images to be on his screen. This seems to be a good way to preserve the intent of the statute in the Internet age.
But even in this more liberal interpretion of possession, person would have to take some action to possess CP that appeared unexpectedly on his screen.
That would mean that one could be guilty just by knowing that the browser cache exists, even if you didn't try to keep the files that were in it. That makes little sense.
It's pretty straightforward actually; perhaps you're looking at this from the wrong end.
You are guilty if found to be in possession of CP.
I understand that. The question is: does one posses (in a legal sense) the contents of one's browser cache. You seem to be saying that you do if you know that the browser cache exists. But this would mean that if two persons open the same web page without knowning its content, see that it contains CP and immediately close the window, the one who does not know about browser caches is innocent but the one who knows is guilty of possession. This is what the courts call an absurd result. They try to find a way to interpret the law so as to avoid such results.
The only situation I can think of where you can view it without downloading it is when it was already saved onto the computer by somebody else. But if you are the owner or operator of the computer, I'm not entirely sure how you're going to believably argue that it wasn't you who downloaded it or saved it there.
You are thinking like a computer programmer. Yes, downloading one or more files is a part of the technical process of viewing a web page. But it is very different (as perceived by the user) from downloading a file and saving it for later use. The essence of this ruling is that what matters is what the human being operating the computer did, not what the computer did behind the scenes in order to carry out its master's will.
The transitory download is still illegal if you know about it.
That would mean that one could be guilty just by knowing that the browser cache exists, even if you didn't try to keep the files that were in it. That makes little sense.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but technically don't you download a page in order to view it?
Technically, yes. Your computer may also "save" the page in your browser cache. But you do not take possesion of what is on the page until you press a button and save it somewhere where you can find it again.
So, under federal law, access with intent to view doesn't require possession, but it does require knowledge and intent.
I'm wondering how they go about proving "intent to view".
I imagine "intent to view" means "intent to use as pornography". There are other reasons for possesing pornography: as evidence, as a source of pulp for paper making, etc.
There is no element of intent involved. If you are aware that you posses CP, you have broken the law. Kent was able to get a handful of the approximately 150 counts dismissed because they didn't prove that he was aware that he possessed the images found in his browser cache.
I don't think that's quite right. It was not that he did not know he possessed them, it was that he did not posses them even though they were in his browser cache
The key to this decision is the difference between having something on one's property and possessing it. For example, lets say you own a house on a big wooded lot. If I were to park my car on some out-of-the-way part of that lot, it would not instantly become your posession. This is true even if you are aware that it is on your property. It is an abandoned car. It could be considered your possession only if you excercise control over it which might include such things as having the keys, driving it, or moving it into your garage.
If I understand this ruling, having an image in one's browser cache is not posession even if one knows it must be there. This decision is the natural consequence of more computer literate judges. For some time prosecuters have been able to imposing on the courts with reasoning such as: He had the images on his hard drive. A hard drive is a container. He put them in this container. Theirfore he possessed them.
What has happened here is the judges now understand what a browser cache is: a temporary storage area over which users do not ordinarily excercise control. It may be a storage container in a technical sense, but not in a legal sense. The fact that a document or an image is in the cache does not indicate that the computer's user is trying to keep it. The judges understand that something which would not be considered a crime if done using old technology should not accidently become a crime when committed using a new technology just because of some obscure technical detail of how the new technology works.
The difference between viewing pornography on the Internet and possessing pornography may be illustrated this way: Suppose that word gets around a school that "there is a dirty picture in the third stall in the boy's room" and some of the boys make excuses to go and look. They do not become possessors of the picture. But one could become a possessor by taking the picture down, taking it home, and hiding it under his matress. And, if we assume (for purposes of argument) that what the boys did was wrong, what the last boy did was more wrong.
Of course, it may be that with the Internet is no longer necessary to possess child pornography it in order to view it regularly and repeatedly. In that case, the legislature may have to decide what level of repeated viewing incures the same guilt as keeping it. But this decision has to be made by the legislature, not by calling viewing possession. If we let prosecuters reshape the law by calling viewing possession than the man who in the course of half an hour one night viewed 10 pornographic pictures of children is just as guilty as the one who has 10 prints of pornographic pictures of children hidden under his matress.
I cannot for the life of me think how this might be useful in cooking
It's increasingly common for recipes to specify mass for a variety of reasons related to accuracy. Measuring mass also means you don't make a whole bunch of measuring cups dirty because you just put one pot on the weighing scales and zero it after each addition.
In the real world you get both volumes and masses, often in the one recipe. When it's easy to convert you don't have to rewrite every recipe that uses volume. I frequently compare recipes from three or more books with their inevitable varied units. Easy conversion means not busting out a spreadsheet to understand the differences.
This is very interesting, so interesting that I might try it. I have heard that kitchen scales are common in some European countries and I have heard of European cook books which give quantities of dry and liquid ingredients by weight, though I don't think I have ever seen such a book, at least not one that was written in English. I believe kitchen scales are available in the US, though they can be hard to find. They are mainly used by diabetics to measure portions.
I believe my contribution to this discussion has been generally misunderstood. I am not against either measurement system. I switch systems depending on what I am doing and what those who are doing it with me understand.
I got involved in this discussion because I saw that the advocates of the Metric (deliberately capitalized) system were repeatedly advancing arguments which I know Americans do not find convincing. The advocates kept emphasizing the technical superiority of the Metric system and expressing the belief that those who have not yet adopted it must have failed to appreciate its technical superiority. (Many expressed this belief far less kindly than I have here.)
I believe that many if not most Americans are already convinced of the technical superiority of the Metric system, at least in theory. The problem is that for them technical superiority is not the deciding factor. For them the Metric system is a new and superior technology which they are not comfortable using and which they know is very expensive. (Metricication has many of the same costs as computerization.)
Even dramatically superior technologies consistently face huge cultural and organizational hurdles before they are adopted. The telephone, the personal computer, and the Internet all did. (See "Father Lets in the Telephone" from "Life With Father" http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0608341h.html#c20) During the period between when the public knows about the technology and accepts it into their lives the advocates have a frustrating time of it. In the 1980's I participated in conversations which went something like this:
Son: Dad, we should get a home computer.
Father: Why? Do you want to be a mathemetician?
Son: Computers aren't just for mathemeticians. You could use it instead of a typewriter. A word processor is much better.
Father: But if I understood you correctly last time we discussed this the required equipment would cost $7000 and take up all of the room on my desk. A typewriter costs only $100 and I can pick it up and put it in the closet when I am not using it.
Son: But it is easier to correct mistakes on a word processor
Father: Perhaps in theory, but in order to gain that small convenience I would have to accept multiple huge inconveniences and pay enough money to buy a car. Son: Yes, dad, but a computer is a multi-purpose machine. You could use it for lots of other things. You could balance your checkbook too.
Father: All I need to balance my checkbook is a $50 calculator.
Here my father was not denying the technical superiority of the personal computer. He simple did not yet want to do any of the things which it made possible.
I see the Metric system advocates making the same mistakes I made in conve
The biggest problem I see with imperial (besides space probes crashing on Mars) is the HUGE barrier to trade it creates. The only things that can be imported into US have to be manufactured specifically for US. Same can be said for exports. This increases our cost of living and decreases wealth all around just because we are too entrenched to change, while the rest of the world somehow pulled it off.
It certainly creates problems in trade, but it is not true that everything imported into the US is redesigned for Imperial units. In reality the entire industrialized word using using a mixture of metric and Imperial unit goods.
True, the vast majority of bolts sold in stores in the US are in Imperial sizes and I believe the vast majority sold in Europe are in metric sizes, but the sizes of the components in manufactuered goods seldom depend on the target market. For example, Japanese manufacturers have been importing automobiles with metric bolts into the US for decades. Other goods are the same. In turn, the US exports many machines and materials in Imperial sizes to Europe. Machines which pack dry goods into bags seem to be a good example. I have frequently seen one and two pound bags of dry goods in countries which have never used the Imperial pound.
The fact that goods are not redesigned for the US market is also one of the reasons for the generally unfavourable view of the metric system in the US. It is seen as the reason everyone has to have two sets of wrenches, one for the "standard" bolts and the other for the metric bolts.
I think you overestimate the convenience....I met a man from Europe...
So metric sucks because you met a stupid person?
I don't think you read what I wrote very carefully. I did not say "metric sucks". I said that those who were raised on the centigrade (Celsius) system are so used to the idea that zero degrees is the freezing point of water that they see the Fahrenheit system as 'broken'. Both the poster to whom I was responding and my "man from Europe" seemed to see it that way.
When I said "I think you overestimate the convenience..." I meant that in countries where celcius is used schoolchildren must be taught that water freezes at 0 degrees. In countries where Fahrenheiht is used they must be tought that water freezes at 32 degrees. In other words, by this narrow measure (which was chosen by the poster to whom I replied), Celcius does have an advantage, but it is a small one.
I have given considerable thought to the question of the relative merits of the two systems. The chief advantage of the centigrade [sic] system...
Why do you object to my use of the term centigrade? It may be old-fashioned, but does that make its use an error?
It's "chief advantage" is that is it's consistent across orders of magnitude.
1 cm = 10 mm
You are describing the advantages of the metric system and the meter in particular. I was describing the advantages of the centigrade (Celcius) temperature scale over the Fahrenheiht temperature scale.
There is further consistency. 1 litre of water is 1 Kg making many daily tasks such as cooking easier.
Perhaps you should give it considerably more thought.
I intend to. I often make use of the fact that 1 liter of water weights 1 Kg. (In fact, if I had to figure out how much five gallons of water weighed in pounds, I would first convert it to liters and then convert to pounds.) However, I cannot for the life of me think how this might be useful in cooking. Please enlighten me.
There have been many serious attempts to do engineering projects in metric units
Start with the Eiffel tower and go on from there. I hate to get personal here, but after reading such silly drivel as the above I really think you've got to get out a bit more and observe what is going on around you before making such a wild and incredibly stupid claim on a site which is actually populated by engineers and scientists.
Um, wow. I see you feel strongly about this. Though the tone of your posting makes me think maybe you are trolling, but I will assume that you have simply misunderstood what I was saying.
The Eiffel tower was built in France, so it is not an example of an engineering project in the United States. Remember, I was talking about why the US engineering and building trades have not switched to metric units.
I do not think I am as uninformed as you claim. I am confortable with both measurement systems and fully appreciate the value of base-ten units. I did not claim that the (international) metric system was intrinsically inferior or that the (enormous) cost of finishing the conversion in the US would not be worth paying. I mearly claimed that it is unlikely to happen (in the engineering and building trades) in the forseeable future.
My statements are based both on 1) press reports such as this one: http://web.archive.org/web/20040824125823/http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/news/local/868607.shtml, 2) at least one account I read by an engineer who had participated in US projects in SI units before his firm went back to "standard" units, 3) my person knowledge of US building material dimensions, and 4) my personal experiments in measuring US building materials in meters.
Fortunately building does not require sub-millimetre precision most of the time. In the UK we have 22mm pipes, which is 7/8th of an inch. A pretty random standard pipe diameter which ever way you look at it, but everything seems to fit and nothing leaks. Similarly wood is available in 25mm widths, despite 1" actually being 25.4mm.
I have some friends who work at a builder's merchant. The builders mix units randomly. Most use mm for things like pipe widths, but will also ask for "ten feet of 22mm copper pipe" or a "2.4m half-inch plank". We are the absolute masters of half-arsed metrification but somehow things still get built.
I think this is more common than is generally believed. I know a man newly arrived from Kazakstan who knew all of the pipe diameters in both inches and millimeters. He was aware that the inch sizes were the "official" sizes and the millimeter sizes were the result of conversion.
However this argument is meaningless in daily life.
The water freezes at 0 degrees C. Yes, the point when you car starts skating on the highway. You could argue that Kelvin scale is more useful in some applications, but what's the point of Fahrenheit?
I think you overestimate the convenience of a system wherin water freezes at zero degrees C. After all, users of the Fahrenheit scale know perfectly well at what temperature water freezes and make frequent reference to it.
I have noticed that this is hard for Europeans to understand because they have been taught since childhood to treat "below zero" and "freezing" a synonyms. I met a man from Europe once who found it hard to conceive that these concepts are not necessarily one and the same. The conversation when like this:
He: so, ten degrees below zero Fahrenheit is freezing?
I: Yes
He: and ten degrees above zero Fahrenheit is also freezing?
I: Yes
He: How can this be?
I have given considerable thought to the question of the relative merits of the two systems. The chief advantage of the centigrade system is that it is easy to remember the freezing and boiling points of water. I have been unable to identify other advantages not of the "they (for various values of they) use it, so should you" variety.
The advantages of the Fahrenheit system seem to be:
1) The degrees are smaller, reducing the need for fractions
2) The entire range of non-extreme air temperatures (from the standpoint of the human body) is encompassed pretty snugly in the range zero through 100 degrees. This greatly reduces the need for negative temperatures in daily life. It also makes the system more phycologically satisfying. As the temperature drops to zero degrees, it become dangerous to go outside without taking precautions. As it reaches 100 degrees the same is true. Consider these key temperatures:
0 degrees: so cold an ordinary winter coat is not sufficient for more than a brief time. (Mr. Fahrenheiht used salted ice to produce this temperature.)
32 degrees: water freezes
70 degrees: room temperature
100 degrees: the temperature inside your body and the air temperature are approximately the same. It is getting really hard to throw off body heat.
212 degrees: water boils
In other words, the centigrade system is pegged to temperatures which have great significance to processes involving water. The Fahrenheit system is loosly pegged to temperatures which are important as perceived by the human body in air.
Actually, it didn't. If you are referring to Apple vs. Microsoft in the 1980s, then that wasn't the reason Apple lost--although it is popular to say so.
Apple granted Microsoft a license to use certain elements of the UI, and Microsoft exploited this license by using such elements in their own GUI system.
Apple lost some of their claims because apparently the license was broad enough to cover most anything. Note that they did win some copyright claims.
-dZ.
Apple also lost because the judge ruled that an extremely high level of similarity between the interfaces did not prove infringment. He ruled that one must first eliminate all elements of the supposedly infringing interface to which Apple had no possible claim. That was pretty much everything.
It is not necessarily like this everywhere. Sure it's common sense, but the DMCA in the US forbids "reverse engineering" which can limit a lot of observing, studying, or testing of the program's execution. In this particular case, a program has been reverse engineered and emulated by another program and it did this without seeing or copying the original source code. Ie, a clean room implementation.
The DMCA does forbid reverse engineering as such. It forbides the trafficing in a means to bypass a technical means of controlling access to a copyright-protected work. So, you could encrypt your code to prevent study and then threaten those who distributed tools which could decrypt it. But this probably would not stop those who developed their own tools (since they would not be trafficing in those tools) and it would not stop black-box analysis.
No way man. Spring-loaded adjustable shims. I'm off to the patent office. Just kidding; but I know somebody else probably IS off to the PO and isn't kidding.
I don't see why they need to be adjustable. And you shouldn't be able to patent them because 21 inches is already as standard rack size. In fact, I think I have seen these shims somewhere.
The first mistake is that they are still talking in inches instead of metric units.
I would imagine that the reason is that 21 inch racks are already a standard. They are widely used in telephony. Introducing a third standard (say 55 cm racks) would likely complicate things for little gain. Better to just call them 5334 mm racks.
This has already been done repeatedly in engineering. When I visit Europe (I am an American) I see things in Imperial units all around me, but most of the time nobody but me knows that they are. 6 mm steel cable? Why not 5 mm? Because 6mm is 1/4 inch. While is their 900 grams of buckwheat in this bag rather than 1000 grams? Because it is a two pound bag filled eight grams short. Railway gage in the former Soviet Union? 1524 mm. Yup, thats five feet. See that 1220x2440 mm sheet of plywood. Yup, 4 by 8 feet.
This by the way is why it is so hard to convince Americans that they should switch the building and engineering trades to the metric system. All our building materials are sized on Imperial units. Converting these dimensions to oddball metric sizes would mean that builders would need to memorizes all sorts of weird dimensions and carry pocket calculators to figure out where the center of something is. There have been many serious attempts to do engineering projects in metric units. First they find out that they can't get materials in even metric dimensions. Then the vendors ask what they mean when they order 914.4 mm doors. Then the builders ask to have the drawings converted into 'the real measurements'. It begins to seem too much like masocism and on the next project they go back to units everybody understands.
Many professions and markets have converted to metric in the US. Medicine mostly has. So has alcohol distribution. So have laboratories. So have our automobiles. But, I don't see any way for the building trades to convert.
The metric system is clearly superior in scientific contexts. There the argument about ease of conversion is powerful. However this argument is meaningless in daily life. The only unit conversion the average person does is feet to inches. You don't need to know how many feet are in a mile in order to know whether you are exceeding the speed limit.
I have found one use for metric units in daily life: increasing ones 'geek cred'. Since expressing dimensions in metric units is a form of elitist obfuscation, it is a great way to be annoying.
Alternatively, you could go for the much-less-radical solution: convince a hotshot D.A. to prosecute the agents for conspiracy to commit a terrorist act. After all, the fact that the agents provided fake explosives does not inherently prevent the person from studying those explosives, determining them to be fake, and substituting actual explosives, in which case the agents' actions could actually cause the very incident that they claim to be trying to prevent.
Actually, I have heard a different argument which also suggests that these operations may encourage terrorism. The argument is that if agents fan out across the country infiltrating various organizations and distributing radical propoganda, they will radicalize these communities.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you remember Alexander Makedonsky? Who fighted against, guess who, Persia? So guess what, it is Persian Gulf, it will be Persian Gulf, it was Persian Gulf when there was not even English language at all.
I think you mean Alexander of Macedonia. In English he is sometimes called Alexander of Macedonia, but he is more well know as Alexander the Great. If Makedonsky were a Russian surname, it would be appropriate to leave it untranslated. But since it is not, you must translate it into English if you want to be understood.
Prosecutor: "So, you viewed child porn, were aware that it was still on your computer, and didn't take any action to remove it? That sounds like a clear-cut of possession to me"
A good judge very well may see through this and but most won't. I think it will be immaterial soon enough because every law will get updated to criminalize the act of viewing (or requesting for the purpose of viewing, or something similar).
I agree with you completely. Prosecutors try to shortcut the difficult process of proving possession all the time. And the laws will definitely have to be updated. Let's hope that when they are, the law makers focus on the acts of the human being and what he sees on his screen (as the judges in this case seem to have done) rather than the inner workings of his computer. I think the law makers should ask themselves "what would constitute possession of a pornagraphic magazine? What are the equivelent actions on the World Wide Web?" The dissenting judge in particular seems to be exploring this question.
The question is: does one posses (in a legal sense) the contents of one's browser cache.
That seems like an absurd question. Of course you do, generally speaking.
I am not sure. I have been reading definitions of legal possession and they frequently require the possessor to excercise control over the object in order for it to be considered in his possesion.
When I read this legal decision, I get the impression that the justices are reluctant to directly answer the question of whether a web browser user is in possession of any given file in his browser's cache. They say that he can't possibly be if he has never heard of the browser cache. Then the majority and the disenter separately advance their theories as to when a person gains possession of an image which has been displayed in his browser window. The majority says that he goes from seeing it to possessing it when he orders the computer to keep it (I am paraphrasing here). The disenter says that he comes into possession of it when he, after understanding the nature of the website, begins to use it actively.
Nowhere can I find a statement by either the majority or the dissent which would suggest that a person who opened a web page with child pornography without knowing in advance what was on it has violated any laws, even technically.
They do not specifically discuss whether a person who accidently opened a page with child pornography is legally oblidged to flush his browser cache. It would of course be a good idea and if one had did so it could be proof that one deliberately rejected possession of the images. But, I think a court might decide that a person who left it in the cache (along with thousands of other files with meaningless names) until it had expired had abandoned it and thus not taken possession.
We will have to wait and see how this developes.
The difference between viewing pornography on the Internet and possessing pornography may be illustrated this way: Suppose that word gets around a school that "there is a dirty picture in the third stall in the boy's room" and some of the boys make excuses to go and look. They do not become possessors of the picture. But one could become a possessor by taking the picture down, taking it home, and hiding it under his matress. And, if we assume (for purposes of argument) that what the boys did was wrong, what the last boy did was more wrong.
Thanks for the lesson but your analogy is off. Under NY state law, looking at that picture on the wall is not illegal (federal law is another story but not in play in this case) but taking a picture of it so you can look again without going to the stall (i.e. caching it locally) means you now possess it. But what if the kid who took the picture didn't know that he has the picture, didn't look at it again, and didn't even take it on purpose. Can he be said to possess for purpose of criminal prosecution? The court said no. Taking it home and hiding it under his mattress would be a completely different story.
I think you've hit the nail on the head here. The whole browser cache question comes to which of these two scenarios is most like the use of a browser with a cache. I would say it is more like the latter. The knowledgable user will know about the cache but probably never examines the files in it and does not consider them to be "saved". He lets the computer take care of it. It is as if the boy knew in theory that the camera in his prosthetic eye must have saved a picture of the bathroom wall for a few minutes, but doesn't care and doesn't try to extract it.
I don't think that's quite right. It was not that he did not know he possessed them, it was that he did not posses them even though they were in his browser cache
That's a great theory, but it doesn't seem to match up with what the ruling actually says:
We must consider, among other issues, the evidentiary significance of "cache files," or temporary internet files automatically created and stored on a defendant's hard drive, and the defendant's awareness of the presence of such files. We conclude that where the evidence fails to show that defendant had such awareness, the People have not met their burden of demonstrating defendant's knowing procurement or possession of those files.
I interpret this to mean that if the defendant didn't know about the cache, the claim that the cached files (all by themselves) are contraband is dead in the water. But I am not sure they are saying that a user who knows about the cache becomes the possessor of a web page the instant it appears on his screen. Look at what they said later:
We also agree that where a promotion or possession conviction is premised on cached images
or files as contraband, the People must prove, at a minimum, that the defendant was aware of the presence of those items in the cache.
We hold, however, that regardless of a defendant's
awareness of his computer's cache function, the files stored in
the cache may constitute evidence of images that were previously
viewed; to possess those images, however, the defendant's conduct
must exceed mere viewing to encompass more affirmative acts of
control such as printing, downloading or saving.
This is a little confusingly worded, but the majority seems to want to see proof that the defendant tried to keep the images by storing them elsewhere on the hard disk. The dissent wants to see proof that the defendant wanted to keep the images on his screen. Both seem to see the cache (at least when used as intended) more as part of the trail of evidence which shows what buttons the defendant pressed in his web browser. They seem to want to see proof that the images were present on his computer by his orders and not simply as a side-effect of the technology.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but technically don't you download a page in order to view it?
Technically, yes. Your computer may also "save" the page in your browser cache. But you do not take possesion of what is on the page until you press a button and save it somewhere where you can find it again.
Just wanted to mention that in the disent a number of deliberate acts which could be considered the taking of possession are named. It is suggested that a person may be taking posession of PD images if he opens additional pages, keeps them open in tabs, or does other things to indicate that he wants PD images to be on his screen. This seems to be a good way to preserve the intent of the statute in the Internet age.
But even in this more liberal interpretion of possession, person would have to take some action to possess CP that appeared unexpectedly on his screen.
That would mean that one could be guilty just by knowing that the browser cache exists, even if you didn't try to keep the files that were in it. That makes little sense.
It's pretty straightforward actually; perhaps you're looking at this from the wrong end.
You are guilty if found to be in possession of CP.
I understand that. The question is: does one posses (in a legal sense) the contents of one's browser cache. You seem to be saying that you do if you know that the browser cache exists. But this would mean that if two persons open the same web page without knowning its content, see that it contains CP and immediately close the window, the one who does not know about browser caches is innocent but the one who knows is guilty of possession. This is what the courts call an absurd result. They try to find a way to interpret the law so as to avoid such results.
The only situation I can think of where you can view it without downloading it is when it was already saved onto the computer by somebody else. But if you are the owner or operator of the computer, I'm not entirely sure how you're going to believably argue that it wasn't you who downloaded it or saved it there.
You are thinking like a computer programmer. Yes, downloading one or more files is a part of the technical process of viewing a web page. But it is very different (as perceived by the user) from downloading a file and saving it for later use. The essence of this ruling is that what matters is what the human being operating the computer did, not what the computer did behind the scenes in order to carry out its master's will.
The transitory download is still illegal if you know about it.
That would mean that one could be guilty just by knowing that the browser cache exists, even if you didn't try to keep the files that were in it. That makes little sense.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but technically don't you download a page in order to view it?
Technically, yes. Your computer may also "save" the page in your browser cache. But you do not take possesion of what is on the page until you press a button and save it somewhere where you can find it again.
So, under federal law, access with intent to view doesn't require possession, but it does require knowledge and intent.
I'm wondering how they go about proving "intent to view".
I imagine "intent to view" means "intent to use as pornography". There are other reasons for possesing pornography: as evidence, as a source of pulp for paper making, etc.
There is no element of intent involved. If you are aware that you posses CP, you have broken the law. Kent was able to get a handful of the approximately 150 counts dismissed because they didn't prove that he was aware that he possessed the images found in his browser cache.
I don't think that's quite right. It was not that he did not know he possessed them, it was that he did not posses them even though they were in his browser cache
The key to this decision is the difference between having something on one's property and possessing it. For example, lets say you own a house on a big wooded lot. If I were to park my car on some out-of-the-way part of that lot, it would not instantly become your posession. This is true even if you are aware that it is on your property. It is an abandoned car. It could be considered your possession only if you excercise control over it which might include such things as having the keys, driving it, or moving it into your garage.
If I understand this ruling, having an image in one's browser cache is not posession even if one knows it must be there. This decision is the natural consequence of more computer literate judges. For some time prosecuters have been able to imposing on the courts with reasoning such as: He had the images on his hard drive. A hard drive is a container. He put them in this container. Theirfore he possessed them.
What has happened here is the judges now understand what a browser cache is: a temporary storage area over which users do not ordinarily excercise control. It may be a storage container in a technical sense, but not in a legal sense. The fact that a document or an image is in the cache does not indicate that the computer's user is trying to keep it. The judges understand that something which would not be considered a crime if done using old technology should not accidently become a crime when committed using a new technology just because of some obscure technical detail of how the new technology works.
The difference between viewing pornography on the Internet and possessing pornography may be illustrated this way: Suppose that word gets around a school that "there is a dirty picture in the third stall in the boy's room" and some of the boys make excuses to go and look. They do not become possessors of the picture. But one could become a possessor by taking the picture down, taking it home, and hiding it under his matress. And, if we assume (for purposes of argument) that what the boys did was wrong, what the last boy did was more wrong.
Of course, it may be that with the Internet is no longer necessary to possess child pornography it in order to view it regularly and repeatedly. In that case, the legislature may have to decide what level of repeated viewing incures the same guilt as keeping it. But this decision has to be made by the legislature, not by calling viewing possession. If we let prosecuters reshape the law by calling viewing possession than the man who in the course of half an hour one night viewed 10 pornographic pictures of children is just as guilty as the one who has 10 prints of pornographic pictures of children hidden under his matress.
I cannot for the life of me think how this might be useful in cooking
It's increasingly common for recipes to specify mass for a variety of reasons related to accuracy. Measuring mass also means you don't make a whole bunch of measuring cups dirty because you just put one pot on the weighing scales and zero it after each addition.
In the real world you get both volumes and masses, often in the one recipe. When it's easy to convert you don't have to rewrite every recipe that uses volume. I frequently compare recipes from three or more books with their inevitable varied units. Easy conversion means not busting out a spreadsheet to understand the differences.
This is very interesting, so interesting that I might try it. I have heard that kitchen scales are common in some European countries and I have heard of European cook books which give quantities of dry and liquid ingredients by weight, though I don't think I have ever seen such a book, at least not one that was written in English. I believe kitchen scales are available in the US, though they can be hard to find. They are mainly used by diabetics to measure portions.
I believe my contribution to this discussion has been generally misunderstood. I am not against either measurement system. I switch systems depending on what I am doing and what those who are doing it with me understand.
I got involved in this discussion because I saw that the advocates of the Metric (deliberately capitalized) system were repeatedly advancing arguments which I know Americans do not find convincing. The advocates kept emphasizing the technical superiority of the Metric system and expressing the belief that those who have not yet adopted it must have failed to appreciate its technical superiority. (Many expressed this belief far less kindly than I have here.)
I believe that many if not most Americans are already convinced of the technical superiority of the Metric system, at least in theory. The problem is that for them technical superiority is not the deciding factor. For them the Metric system is a new and superior technology which they are not comfortable using and which they know is very expensive. (Metricication has many of the same costs as computerization.)
Even dramatically superior technologies consistently face huge cultural and organizational hurdles before they are adopted. The telephone, the personal computer, and the Internet all did. (See "Father Lets in the Telephone" from "Life With Father" http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0608341h.html#c20) During the period between when the public knows about the technology and accepts it into their lives the advocates have a frustrating time of it. In the 1980's I participated in conversations which went something like this:
Son: Dad, we should get a home computer.
Father: Why? Do you want to be a mathemetician?
Son: Computers aren't just for mathemeticians. You could use it instead of a typewriter. A word processor is much better.
Father: But if I understood you correctly last time we discussed this the required equipment would cost $7000 and take up all of the room on my desk. A typewriter costs only $100 and I can pick it up and put it in the closet when I am not using it.
Son: But it is easier to correct mistakes on a word processor
Father: Perhaps in theory, but in order to gain that small convenience I would have to accept multiple huge inconveniences and pay enough money to buy a car.
Son: Yes, dad, but a computer is a multi-purpose machine. You could use it for lots of other things. You could balance your checkbook too.
Father: All I need to balance my checkbook is a $50 calculator.
Here my father was not denying the technical superiority of the personal computer. He simple did not yet want to do any of the things which it made possible.
I see the Metric system advocates making the same mistakes I made in conve
The biggest problem I see with imperial (besides space probes crashing on Mars) is the HUGE barrier to trade it creates. The only things that can be imported into US have to be manufactured specifically for US. Same can be said for exports. This increases our cost of living and decreases wealth all around just because we are too entrenched to change, while the rest of the world somehow pulled it off.
It certainly creates problems in trade, but it is not true that everything imported into the US is redesigned for Imperial units. In reality the entire industrialized word using using a mixture of metric and Imperial unit goods.
True, the vast majority of bolts sold in stores in the US are in Imperial sizes and I believe the vast majority sold in Europe are in metric sizes, but the sizes of the components in manufactuered goods seldom depend on the target market. For example, Japanese manufacturers have been importing automobiles with metric bolts into the US for decades. Other goods are the same. In turn, the US exports many machines and materials in Imperial sizes to Europe. Machines which pack dry goods into bags seem to be a good example. I have frequently seen one and two pound bags of dry goods in countries which have never used the Imperial pound.
The fact that goods are not redesigned for the US market is also one of the reasons for the generally unfavourable view of the metric system in the US. It is seen as the reason everyone has to have two sets of wrenches, one for the "standard" bolts and the other for the metric bolts.
I think you overestimate the convenience....I met a man from Europe...
So metric sucks because you met a stupid person?
I don't think you read what I wrote very carefully. I did not say "metric sucks". I said that those who were raised on the centigrade (Celsius) system are so used to the idea that zero degrees is the freezing point of water that they see the Fahrenheit system as 'broken'. Both the poster to whom I was responding and my "man from Europe" seemed to see it that way.
When I said "I think you overestimate the convenience..." I meant that in countries where celcius is used schoolchildren must be taught that water freezes at 0 degrees. In countries where Fahrenheiht is used they must be tought that water freezes at 32 degrees. In other words, by this narrow measure (which was chosen by the poster to whom I replied), Celcius does have an advantage, but it is a small one.
I have given considerable thought to the question of the relative merits of the two systems. The chief advantage of the centigrade [sic] system...
Why do you object to my use of the term centigrade? It may be old-fashioned, but does that make its use an error?
It's "chief advantage" is that is it's consistent across orders of magnitude.
1 cm = 10 mm
You are describing the advantages of the metric system and the meter in particular. I was describing the advantages of the centigrade (Celcius) temperature scale over the Fahrenheiht temperature scale.
There is further consistency. 1 litre of water is 1 Kg making many daily tasks such as cooking easier.
Perhaps you should give it considerably more thought.
I intend to. I often make use of the fact that 1 liter of water weights 1 Kg. (In fact, if I had to figure out how much five gallons of water weighed in pounds, I would first convert it to liters and then convert to pounds.) However, I cannot for the life of me think how this might be useful in cooking. Please enlighten me.
Start with the Eiffel tower and go on from there.
I hate to get personal here, but after reading such silly drivel as the above I really think you've got to get out a bit more and observe what is going on around you before making such a wild and incredibly stupid claim on a site which is actually populated by engineers and scientists.
Um, wow. I see you feel strongly about this. Though the tone of your posting makes me think maybe you are trolling, but I will assume that you have simply misunderstood what I was saying.
The Eiffel tower was built in France, so it is not an example of an engineering project in the United States. Remember, I was talking about why the US engineering and building trades have not switched to metric units.
I do not think I am as uninformed as you claim. I am confortable with both measurement systems and fully appreciate the value of base-ten units. I did not claim that the (international) metric system was intrinsically inferior or that the (enormous) cost of finishing the conversion in the US would not be worth paying. I mearly claimed that it is unlikely to happen (in the engineering and building trades) in the forseeable future.
My statements are based both on 1) press reports such as this one: http://web.archive.org/web/20040824125823/http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/news/local/868607.shtml, 2) at least one account I read by an engineer who had participated in US projects in SI units before his firm went back to "standard" units, 3) my person knowledge of US building material dimensions, and 4) my personal experiments in measuring US building materials in meters.
Fortunately building does not require sub-millimetre precision most of the time. In the UK we have 22mm pipes, which is 7/8th of an inch. A pretty random standard pipe diameter which ever way you look at it, but everything seems to fit and nothing leaks. Similarly wood is available in 25mm widths, despite 1" actually being 25.4mm.
I have some friends who work at a builder's merchant. The builders mix units randomly. Most use mm for things like pipe widths, but will also ask for "ten feet of 22mm copper pipe" or a "2.4m half-inch plank". We are the absolute masters of half-arsed metrification but somehow things still get built.
I think this is more common than is generally believed. I know a man newly arrived from Kazakstan who knew all of the pipe diameters in both inches and millimeters. He was aware that the inch sizes were the "official" sizes and the millimeter sizes were the result of conversion.
However this argument is meaningless in daily life.
The water freezes at 0 degrees C. Yes, the point when you car starts skating on the highway. You could argue that Kelvin scale is more useful in some applications, but what's the point of Fahrenheit?
I think you overestimate the convenience of a system wherin water freezes at zero degrees C. After all, users of the Fahrenheit scale know perfectly well at what temperature water freezes and make frequent reference to it.
I have noticed that this is hard for Europeans to understand because they have been taught since childhood to treat "below zero" and "freezing" a synonyms. I met a man from Europe once who found it hard to conceive that these concepts are not necessarily one and the same. The conversation when like this:
He: so, ten degrees below zero Fahrenheit is freezing?
I: Yes
He: and ten degrees above zero Fahrenheit is also freezing?
I: Yes
He: How can this be?
I have given considerable thought to the question of the relative merits of the two systems. The chief advantage of the centigrade system is that it is easy to remember the freezing and boiling points of water. I have been unable to identify other advantages not of the "they (for various values of they) use it, so should you" variety.
The advantages of the Fahrenheit system seem to be:
1) The degrees are smaller, reducing the need for fractions
2) The entire range of non-extreme air temperatures (from the standpoint of the human body) is encompassed pretty snugly in the range zero through 100 degrees. This greatly reduces the need for negative temperatures in daily life. It also makes the system more phycologically satisfying. As the temperature drops to zero degrees, it become dangerous to go outside without taking precautions. As it reaches 100 degrees the same is true. Consider these key temperatures:
0 degrees: so cold an ordinary winter coat is not sufficient for more than a brief time. (Mr. Fahrenheiht used salted ice to produce this temperature.)
32 degrees: water freezes
70 degrees: room temperature
100 degrees: the temperature inside your body and the air temperature are approximately the same. It is getting really hard to throw off body heat.
212 degrees: water boils
In other words, the centigrade system is pegged to temperatures which have great significance to processes involving water. The Fahrenheit system is loosly pegged to temperatures which are important as perceived by the human body in air.
Actually, it didn't. If you are referring to Apple vs. Microsoft in the 1980s, then that wasn't the reason Apple lost--although it is popular to say so.
Apple granted Microsoft a license to use certain elements of the UI, and Microsoft exploited this license by using such elements in their own GUI system.
Apple lost some of their claims because apparently the license was broad enough to cover most anything. Note that they did win some copyright claims.
-dZ.
Apple also lost because the judge ruled that an extremely high level of similarity between the interfaces did not prove infringment. He ruled that one must first eliminate all elements of the supposedly infringing interface to which Apple had no possible claim. That was pretty much everything.
It is not necessarily like this everywhere. Sure it's common sense, but the DMCA in the US forbids "reverse engineering" which can limit a lot of observing, studying, or testing of the program's execution. In this particular case, a program has been reverse engineered and emulated by another program and it did this without seeing or copying the original source code. Ie, a clean room implementation.
The DMCA does forbid reverse engineering as such. It forbides the trafficing in a means to bypass a technical means of controlling access to a copyright-protected work. So, you could encrypt your code to prevent study and then threaten those who distributed tools which could decrypt it. But this probably would not stop those who developed their own tools (since they would not be trafficing in those tools) and it would not stop black-box analysis.
It wouldn't. It ruled on copyrightability.
Looks like I remembered incorrectly. Telecom racks are actually 23 inches wide.
No way man. Spring-loaded adjustable shims. I'm off to the patent office. Just kidding; but I know somebody else probably IS off to the PO and isn't kidding.
I don't see why they need to be adjustable. And you shouldn't be able to patent them because 21 inches is already as standard rack size. In fact, I think I have seen these shims somewhere.
The first mistake is that they are still talking in inches instead of metric units.
I would imagine that the reason is that 21 inch racks are already a standard. They are widely used in telephony. Introducing a third standard (say 55 cm racks) would likely complicate things for little gain. Better to just call them 5334 mm racks.
This has already been done repeatedly in engineering. When I visit Europe (I am an American) I see things in Imperial units all around me, but most of the time nobody but me knows that they are. 6 mm steel cable? Why not 5 mm? Because 6mm is 1/4 inch. While is their 900 grams of buckwheat in this bag rather than 1000 grams? Because it is a two pound bag filled eight grams short. Railway gage in the former Soviet Union? 1524 mm. Yup, thats five feet. See that 1220x2440 mm sheet of plywood. Yup, 4 by 8 feet.
This by the way is why it is so hard to convince Americans that they should switch the building and engineering trades to the metric system. All our building materials are sized on Imperial units. Converting these dimensions to oddball metric sizes would mean that builders would need to memorizes all sorts of weird dimensions and carry pocket calculators to figure out where the center of something is. There have been many serious attempts to do engineering projects in metric units. First they find out that they can't get materials in even metric dimensions. Then the vendors ask what they mean when they order 914.4 mm doors. Then the builders ask to have the drawings converted into 'the real measurements'. It begins to seem too much like masocism and on the next project they go back to units everybody understands.
Many professions and markets have converted to metric in the US. Medicine mostly has. So has alcohol distribution. So have laboratories. So have our automobiles. But, I don't see any way for the building trades to convert.
The metric system is clearly superior in scientific contexts. There the argument about ease of conversion is powerful. However this argument is meaningless in daily life. The only unit conversion the average person does is feet to inches. You don't need to know how many feet are in a mile in order to know whether you are exceeding the speed limit.
I have found one use for metric units in daily life: increasing ones 'geek cred'. Since expressing dimensions in metric units is a form of elitist obfuscation, it is a great way to be annoying.
Alternatively, you could go for the much-less-radical solution: convince a hotshot D.A. to prosecute the agents for conspiracy to commit a terrorist act. After all, the fact that the agents provided fake explosives does not inherently prevent the person from studying those explosives, determining them to be fake, and substituting actual explosives, in which case the agents' actions could actually cause the very incident that they claim to be trying to prevent.
Actually, I have heard a different argument which also suggests that these operations may encourage terrorism. The argument is that if agents fan out across the country infiltrating various organizations and distributing radical propoganda, they will radicalize these communities.